Filipinos raring to travel again – AirAsia

MANILA, Philippines — Filipinos are already raring to travel abroad early next year amid uncertainties still posed by the COVID-19 pandemic.

AirAsia Philippines spokesperson Steve Dailisan told The STAR that the carrier has recently recorded a significant spike in international travel bookings for early 2021.

“At the moment we’ve observed around 50 percent increase in bookings for international travel made during the recent airasia.com super sale. This mostly covers travel period for early 2021,” he said.

AirAsia Philippines last month indicated that confidence in air travel is slowly returning and it sees travel demand getting stronger by next year.

The airline posted an “impressive” commercial flights sales in August, closing the month with a 140 percent increase in seats sold.

A third of bookings registered were for 2021, reflecting a demand for future travel, it reported.

Dailisan, however, said the carrier has yet to see change in passenger behavior in response to the recent easing of travel restrictions on non- essential travels.

“While we are optimistic that this will significantly improve soon, we look forward to increasing domestic connectivity through air travel,” he said.

“We are opening new routes such as Zamboanga and General Santos on Oct. 27 and 28 to further boost local economic activity and rebuild confidence in air travel,” Dailisan said.

AirAsia Philippines has been offering its customers deals that aim to re-energize air travel demand and help in the country’s economic recovery.

It has teamed up with local hotels to offer attractive flight and hotel deals as part of the carrier’s continuing efforts to boost domestic tourism.

SNAP is a flight and hotel combo platform on airasia.com which offers convenient fly and stay packages at attractive prices.

The low-cost carrier has also recently offered an exclusive buy one take one promo on all domestic and international flights for a limited time.

AirAsia Philippines CEO Ricky Isla earlier said the airline is prepared to increase flight frequencies, launch new destinations, while utilizing all four hubs flying to both domestic and international destinations once travel restrictions further eases.